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Iraq in 2017

In drafting Article 140 of the constitution, Kurdish leaders believed they were gaining guaranteed acquisition of Kirkuk. However, because of the way the constitution was achieved – through a rushed process culminating in a political deal between the Kurds and a single Shiite party, SCIRI, to the exclusion of many other parties, communities and minorities, as well as civil society organisations and public opinion more broadly – it reflects imposition of a Kurdish template for Kirkuk rather than a consensus agreement. As a result, a Kirkuk referendum may not happen, certainly not by the December 2007 deadline, and Kurdish aspirations may well flounder.

For the Kurds, this deadline thus threatens to become a self-laid trap. Having raised expectations and convinced their people to defer their Kirkuk ambitions by a couple of years, Kurdish leaders must now deliver by the end of 2007 or meet their wrath. As a Kurdish official put it, “we concentrated so much on Kirkuk, we would lose face if we now lowered our position. This is the problem”.

This is a problem, however, not only for the Kurdish leadership, but for all Iraqis, as the Kurds’ failure to secure Kirkuk by lawful, constitutional procedure may drive them to reckless adventurism with the risk of violence, civil war and possibly (direct or indirect) foreign intervention...

....The U.S. needs to recognise the risk of an explosion in Kirkuk and press the Kurds, the Baghdad government and Turkey alike to adjust policies and facilitate a peaceful settlement.

The studied bystander mode assumed by Washington, the Kurds’ sole ally, has not been helpful. Preoccupied with their attempt to save Iraq by implementing a new security plan in Baghdad, the Bush administration has left the looming Kirkuk crisis to the side. This neglect can cost the U.S. severely. If the referendum is held later this year over the objections of the other communities, the civil war is very likely to spread to Kirkuk and the Kurdish region, until now Iraq’s only area of quiet and progress. If the referendum is postponed without a viable facesaving alternative for the Kurds, their leaders may withdraw from the Maliki cabinet and thus precipitate a governmental crisis in Baghdad just when the security plan is, in theory, supposed to yield its political returns....

Security May Trump Ethnicity in Kirkuk

A staunch Arab nationalist, Ismail Hadidi once dreaded the possibility that his ethnically diverse city would be swallowed up by the neighboring semiautonomous Kurdish region and cut off from the Baghdad government.

But the provincial councilman is also a practical man. And when he compares the chaos and violence in the Iraqi capital with the prosperity and peace next door in the three-province Kurdistan Regional Government area, teaming up with the Kurds doesn't seem like such a bad idea. He's even considering buying some property in the Kurdish enclave.

"The people of Kirkuk were afraid of this," said Hadidi, a Sunni Arab tribal leader. "But given the situation, I believe most people will move toward being part of Kurdistan, because what the people want above all is security."

Uncertainty clouds Iraq's future, but not so much here. The Kurdish region's exploding economic and political power has begun to shape northern Iraq's reality...

......Difficult negotiations over a provincial elections law in July-September 2008 were only the latest indication of the centrality of the Kirkuk question. A minority in Iraq, the Kurds have deployed all available legal and institutional mechanisms to facilitate their quest for Kirkuk. Still, they have failed to overcome the odds. The result has been a growing political standoff that is immediately destabilising – witness developments in and around Khanaqin in August-September – and, perhaps even more dangerously, challenges the foundations of the post-2003 order. The territorial dispute stems from a deeper Arab-Kurdish conflict that has its origins in the state’s creation almost a century ago and has yet to be settled, whether through accommodation or by force. At its core it is a struggle between rival nationalisms with conflicting territorial claims to border areas, which the two groups claim based on historical demographic presence rather than on established boundaries, which never existed. Today, the goal should be a negotiated, consensus-based accommodation enshrined in the constitution, ratified in a referendum and guaranteed by the international community.

Deadlocked negotiations over the hydrocarbons and related laws, the architecture of federalism and the constitution review, together with growing tensions in disputed territories such as Khanaqin, suggest that these negotiations ought to shift from their focus on single issues to a grand bargain. A comprehensive approach will demand painful compromises from key stakeholders – principally Arabs and Kurds – who will be unable to provide their constituencies all they had promised them. It also will require overcoming deeply entrenched fears and mistrust.....

On January 31, most Iraqis will go to the polls and express their political preferences in provincial elections, but four of Iraq's provinces -- the three governorates within the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) and Kirkuk province -- will not hold elections. Kirkuk's noninclusion is a symbol of its unresolved status, and its elections are on hold until the Council of Representatives in Baghdad passes a special election law. There is little impetus, however, for the different ethnic factions to compromise on such a law unless the international community strongly supports the process.....

....Given great uncertainty over how security conditions will develop along the trigger line in the coming year, progress in political negotiations over the disputed territories’ status has become more imperative than ever. While neither Baghdad nor Erbil appears to have an interest in armed confrontation, and both sides seem intent for the moment to capitalise on the mutual goodwill that arose from formation of the new coalition government, the disputed territories conflict is so fundamental to Baghdad-Erbil relations that a single incident could trigger a dangerous escalation. The unilateral deployment of Kurdish asaesh in Kirkuk city in November 2010 and of peshmergas / zerevanis into Kirkuk governorate in February 2011 were two such incidents. Violence has been avoided so far, in large measure because of the Baghdad-Erbil-U.S. security arrangement, but these moves stoked local anger as well as unease over the Kurds’ long-term plans; they could still give rise to violent response and will vastly complicate negotiations for a deal, especially if the Kurds’ military forces are not withdrawn to the Kurdistan region....

Since the fall of the former regime, in 2003, there has been continuous concern that fighting might break out between the Arabs and the Kurds over Kirkuk and the boundary of the Kurdistan Regional Government.

In response to requests to help manage tensions between the different security forces, General Odierno, then Commanding General of United States Forces-Iraq, developed a Joint Security Architecture, bringing together Iraqi Security Forces, Kurdish forces, and US forces to work against their common enemy, the al-Qaeda.

US forces are due to start pulling out of their conflict prevention role along the ‘trigger line’ that divides the Kurds and the Arabs in the disputed territories, by the summer of 2011. Unless new conflict prevention mechanisms are put in place, there is a real risk that tensions could boil over as people tire of waiting for a political resolution.

Worth reading: 'Baghdad Doesn’t Want You to Know How Many of Its Soldiers Are Dying' and for the unit at the front in Mosul:

The problem is, the constant fighting is bleeding dry the Golden Division. A Pentagon source told Politico that Iraqi Special Operations Forces “are suffering upwards of 50-percent casualties. The division could become combat ineffective in a little over a month, and perhaps even sooner".